This past summer, July Last, I spent a week with my brother for his wedding in a place he loves and I hate. This was for the occasion of his wedding and it would be our last gathering at that place I so hate. His like for the place is vested in his being more attached to family than I. Ocean City, Maryland was the annual destination of our family as boys.
Tony, being well socialized, and me being an oddball, made of this place, in our mind’s eye as adults looking back: his loved place and my hated place. He knew. I did not have to say anything to him. He knew that I would not be back and that I only returned for the annual family gathering because he was getting married.
He and his lovely bride sent me this card in Utah. This was written on the back of a card with photos from their wedding on the beach:
“Jim, I don’t know where to begin to thank you for everything you did at the wedding. I was so proud to have you as my best man. From helping with the set-up, my vows, clean-up, everything. I don’t want to forget to mention the great cigars too. I just want you to know how thankful I am that you were there for me.
Love ya Bro!
Tony
…
“Jim,
Thank you for everything you did to help make our wedding day special. You went out of your way to make sure everyone was enjoying their night. Most importantly it was great to spend the week with you there. I am beyond grateful for the fact that I can call you my brother. Not only that but the kids have the coolest uncle every! (Smile) Thank you for welcoming me into your family from the very beginning.
Love,
Amanda
AKA Amber
…
Well, my brother done robbed the cradle for this young beauty, who looks like my favorite white stripper named Amber, and was henceforth christened.
Well, while we were getting them married and weathering the shamdemic, I was writing Write Hate. Ocean City, Maryland is simply a terrible place and their union was a flower in its waste.
Interestingly, when Bob saw their picture, he said, “You can tell you’re brothers, plain as day.”
Tony and I are adopted brothers and I was proud to neglect to qualify that to Bob.
I chose to write my deep antipathy for America, set in Ocean City, and as a mythic fantasy. When I am in a place that disturbs me, I thought that I should write a story immersed in the setting, rather than in wider ideas.
I hope here, to find no typos, but will not hold my breath.
I suppose, that technically, the novel under examination is a “rampage novel,” basically the first person shooter interpretation of a temporal miscalculation.
Okay, and this has nothing to do with the fact that I have just drunk three beers and six shots, but this is the best line I have ever written:
“‘She still has the nicest tits—it’s a shame her parents are rich.’”
How can I improve on that!?!?
Pages 1 thru 7 were based on my ride into OC, MD, and, I thought conformed to normal social mores. My brother in law did warn me that there would be a family intervention against my continued knucklehead pursuits and hobo life. I knew that this duty would fall to my brother, who would do the bare minimum to be able to claim to have tried to talk sense into me. If it turned out to be a group intervention, I had decided to hike north to Delaware and then call Mister Grey or Incognegro for an evac.
Page 7: capitalize Dis and redact semicolon after ellipse
Page 8: capitalize Coastal Highway
Page 9: add footnote about psyche advertisement
Page 10: Break first paragraph into two sentences, insert / after dining room
Page 11: replace comma with and after brothers
Page 12: inserted after ‘The shirt was soaked, so he left it draped over a lamp shade,’ feat to feast
Page 14: rediculous to ridiculous, ambroshia to ambrosia
Page 17: hid to hiding,
Page 18: acing him to facing him
Page 20: capitalize Wanting
Page 23: vet, seeing double, redo in the morning
Page 26: remove redundant ‘fence’, sentence break and ad ‘She was,’
The woman in the pink bikini and pearls was based on a woman in a white bikini I admired as the people nearby discussed how tastelessly she was attired for having such a large butt and breasts.
Page 29: meet-puppet to meat-puppet thrice
Page 32: insert ‘a’ before scruff
Page 35: into twained to in twain, a, to an, gog to fog,
Page 36: form to from, circled to circles
Page 37: add quotation mark before “Fucking, discuss to discus, giggled to jiggled
Page 38: Rightclaw to Rightmaul
Page 39: scarped to scraped
Page 43: place quotation marks around “Run when I turn. Run for the thickest herd and get lost among them—run south as I run north!”, I wonder into in wonder,
Page 44: were to where, a very common mistake of mine, their to the, cup to cop, abided to abode,
Page 48: redact foes
Page 50: last paragraph, sentence break before so
Page 53: single quotes to replace the quotes on the yore song, it being an internal song, cast to casts, conjigal to conjugal
Page 54: robing to probing
Page 59: remove talk from before talking
Page 62: add comma after palm out
I liked reading Write Hate. I hope you do too.
